Russia and the Former Soviet Union

Contested geographies and cultures in which (according to Iurii Lotman\u27s and Boris Uspenskii\u27s seminal study Binary Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture ) there is a lack of relatively neutral political, social, economic, and legal institutions capable of mediating between the polarities of church and state, private and public, sacred and secular. As a consequence, for the last two centuries Russian literature and literary debate have assumed extraordinary significance as almost the sole realm of negotiating a collective as well as individual identity. The binary structure of Russian culture in large part characterizes the relationship between literature and science as well. Throughout modern Russian history, one finds either extreme tension between the two or radically synthetic attempts to erase the gap between different modes of knowledge altogether

Efroimson, Vladimir Pavlovich

EFROIMSON, VLADIMIR PAVLOVICH ( 1908-1989). Geneticist, seminal figure in the development of population and medical genetics, author of works on sociobiology and the genetics of human ethical and aesthetic behavior

Eugenics, Rejuvenation, and Bulgakov\u27s Journey into the Heart of Dogness

In this article, I propose a new reading of Heart of a Dog, one that takes seriously Professor Preobrazhenskii\u27s claim that his real interest is eugenics, the improvement of the human species. The Professor\u27s eugenics project is not limited to a cosmetic, physical improvement of human subjects; it anticipates urging humankind toward a higher stage of intellectual and spiritual development as well. Therefore, when he mistakenly transforms a dog into a man instead of a more intelligent dog, he considers the experiment an abject failure because the new man no longer has a dog\u27s heart, but a human one, and the vilest one you could find. This does not deter the Professor from further research; on the contrary, at the end of the book he is still searching for the mysterious mechanism that connects the secrets of the brain to the secrets of the heart. The science that makes rejuvenation procedures and genetic engineering possible is no longer as fictional as it was in Bulgakov\u27s time, thus, an analysis that highlights the novel\u27s exploration of how science, politics, and ideology interact is long overdue. I propose that the novel\u27s enduring significance lies not in its overworked interpretation as an anti-Soviet satire or as a warning against scientific hubris. Rather, it remains a brilliant exploration of the conundrum of where nature meets nurture in efforts to enhance humankind

The Genetics of Morality: Policing Science in Dudintsev’s \u3cem\u3eWhite Robes\u3c/em\u3e

The Men and women in White Robes (Belye odezhdv), Vladimir Dudinstev\u27s fictional account of the banning of genetics in the Soviet Union, are acutely aware that in the 20th century, the study of the fruit fly is the study of man. The key to unraveling the mystery of human nature lies in the easily observed chromosomes of the forbidden fly (drosophila melanogaster). Under Stalin, the banned geneticists were branded “Morganists” after their hero Thomas Hunt Morgan, the Columbia University researcher who pioneered the technique of mapping locations on drosophila chromosomes to specific traits in the flies. To find the material location (identified as “genes”) that determine traits inspired many intellectuals in the interwar years, not in the least Soviet researchers who were also at the forefront of international advances in genetics during in the first three decades of the 20th century. In her memoirs, Raisa Berg expresses both the urgency of the problems “fly work” might solve —- how much difference among individuals is heritable? what forces preserve the balance between mutant change and stability of type in a given population? — as well as the typical ardor of early Soviet drosophilists: Fruit flies are marvelous. Looking at them through a binocular microscope is sheer pleasure. Their red, faceted eyes look like burning, pomegranate colored bonfires, their translucent wings shimmer like a rainbow, and the bristles that cover their bodies seem to be made of nylon […] the color of honey or bright aged bronze. (Berg 1988, 40) Only later in the century would American scientists (Morgan’s former students) pick up the trail that seemed to link genes to more abstract traits, like individual sluggishness, drive, cooperation and aggression. Today, most people accept as commonplace the notion that human behavior including behavior encompassed in our constructions of morality (e.g., altruism, loyalty, courage) — is shaped by a combination of both biological and social factors. In this article I discuss Soviet modes of disciplining and the transformation of the literary hero from a socially conditioned “new Soviet man” to the instinctively individualist protagonist of late Soviet prose

Berries (Iagody)

For centuries the berries that grow in the forests and swamps of northern Russia have been a crucial source of vitamin C, antioxidants, and other micronutrients that would otherwise be lacking in the locally-based diet of most Russians

Baring the Brain as well as the Soul: Milan Kundera\u27s The Joke

In what follows, I will argue that two current theories about how our minds ascribe intentional psychological states to other people (so-called Theory of Mind) as well as to non-personal events that happen to us (a proposed Existential Theory of Mind) provide a rich interpretive framework for understanding the social and historical context of Kundera’s innovative aesthetics

Zamayatin, Evgeny Ivanovich (1884-1937)

Zamayatin, Evgeny Ivanovich (1884-1967), Russian engineer, fiction writer, critic-essayist, and editor. Zamayatin was born in the provincial town of Lebedyan in central Russia. He joined the Bolshevik Party in opposition to the tsar\u27s regime while still a student of naval engineering in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg. He was imprisoned and exiled from St. Petersburg, an experience that provided material for his first short novels and stories

A Clash of Fictions: Geopolitics in recent Russian and Ukrainian Literature

When the vast, multinational Soviet empire collapsed in 1991, the geopolitical structure it had struggled to maintain for most of the 20111 century - often by means of brutal repression and forced remobilization of entire populations - proved itself in the eyes of many to be fatally out of sync with the epochal norm of the nation-state. By the end of the 18th century, people in many parts of the world had begun to imagine themselves as nations and to organize politically into states whose primary function would be to protect, nurture, and (in a kind of Romantic feedback loop) vindicate the existence of the people as a nation. In Eastern Europe, movements towards national self-determination began somewhat later - towards the end of the 19th century - and were notoriously aborted or suppressed by violent redistribution of power and territory in the aftermath of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. As is well known, as the world\u27s first self-proclaimed communist state, the Soviet Union was ideologically committed to uniting the workers of the world on the basis of class interests rather than narrow ethnic or national identity; in practice, the USSR pursued different strategies in different periods to accommodate and/or manipulate the tension within its far-flung borders between national self-awareness and self-expression versus a collective, Soviet, supranational notion of belonging. It is axiomatic to Slavic Studies that throughout the 20th century, fictional literature and even academic histories of literature played a crucial role in articulating the contours of national and Soviet identity

WE (1924)

One of the first and most important works of modern dystopian literature, this novel by Russian writer Evgeny Zamayatin was written in 1919-1920 and published in English in 1924. The original Russian version was not authorized for publication in the Soviet Union until 1988, when Gorbachev\u27s policy of culture openness (glasnost) allowed readers access to twentieth-century Russian literature inimical to the communist project

Havel, Vaclav

Czech playwright, dissident writer and human rights philosopher, statesman, president of Czechoslovakia, and first president of the Czech Republic. Havel was born into a prominent business family in Prague during the interwar period of Czech independence